X-Message-Number: 6702 From: (Thomas Donaldson) Subject: Re: CryoNet #6688 - #6694 Date: Tue, 6 Aug 1996 15:59:24 -0700 (PDT) Hi again! Some comments: 1. I will be sending Olga a message asking for information too. 2. The FAQ seems to talk as if brain vitrification was different from cryonics. That seems an odd way of looking at cryonics. And if Paul or anyone think it is fundamentally different, then they might give it a better name than it presently has. As you may guess, I think not that it is different but that it would be an ADVANCE IN CRYONICS. 3. After we've lost several people in conditions in which they cannot be either frozen (with perfusate of the present kind) or vitrified (which requires a different perfusate, but still requires perfusion) it behooves us not to believe vitrification will necessarily apply to everyone --- regardless of its merits. If we are not to simply give up on those frozen prior to vitrification, then we abandon a central idea of cryonics: that people should remain in storage (or be put into storage) EVEN IF WE DON'T KNOW HOW TO FIX THEM. And you, Paul, or you, Brian, might easily find yourself in such a situation. How do you know what the universe has in store for you? Sure, vitrification will and should replace the technology now used in many suspensions --- but unfortunately not in all... not because it's not better, but because it just won't always be possible. As for what we think of freezing, I will finally point out that IF we did choose to abandon those frozen patients, we may very well find ourselves abandoned too (even though we're vitrified) because yet one more technology for preserving us has been invented. Not good at all for our future hopes. Frankly, I think that this point was one that lay behind some of Ettinger's comments. Even total success of Prometheus just won't replace our present methods (or even worse ones!) in AL casess. Best and long long life, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=6702